D3300 / TT685II-N settings for bar / club etc photos?

[King Mustard]

I am a beginner and have no real interest in learning too much about cameras.

I use my camera, a Nikon D3300 (with Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens), in auto mode (minus flash) and it works well enough in daytime photos. I like using spot focus, the background blur looks nice.

I want to start taking it to family events that take place in evenings, such as wedding parties, grandkid's discos etc, as smartphones camera LEDs are rubbish in low light environments.

I recently bought a Godox TT685II-N to 'replace' the camera's built-in flash.

I have the flash in i-TTL mode and camera in auto (with flash).

Is this all I have to do? Or do you suggest changing settings on the camera and/or flash?

All I want is to pick up the camera and go, not mess with settings every time I want to take a photo.

 

[Clovishound]

The 685 is a great flash IMO. I have one that I use primarily for macro work.

TTL and auto should be a good place to start. If it gives you the results you want, then stick with it.

I will mention that the 685 has two built in diffusers. If you look carefully at the head there are two little slide out plastic pieces. One pulls out and lays across the head. The other is more of a white card that pulls straight out and sticks up above the head. It is designed to be used in "bounce" mode where you adjust the head to point at the ceiling. The card will bounce the light forward toward the subject. These will help to keep the light from the flash being too harsh. If you have the flash in TTL mode, it will automatically compensate for any loss of light output.

Give it a test run indoors and see how the exposure goes. Even the little screen on the back should give you a good idea of whether you are in the ballpark on exposure.

 

[BF Hammer]

I tend to use auto mode in that kind of environment. I encourage you to do some practice with direct flash and bounced flash. Direct flash has a tendency to make background go dark as the light does not bounce back to the camera as quickly as the light from the main subject does. Bounced light gives a more diffused light and will light up the background, but overall the image will be dimmer. I tend to prefer the bounced flash but remembering what each method does allows you to control the overall image.

Then if you want to get fancy you have the long-exposure flash synchro option where the flash fires quickly in a longer exposure time (like 1/60 second) which allows the main subject to be lit up and the background to also show in the image.

 

[King Mustard]

I tend to use auto mode in that kind of environment. I encourage you to do some practice with direct flash and bounced flash. Direct flash has a tendency to make background go dark as the light does not bounce back to the camera as quickly as the light from the main subject does. Bounced light gives a more diffused light and will light up the background, but overall the image will be dimmer. I tend to prefer the bounced flash but remembering what each method does allows you to control the overall image.

Then if you want to get fancy you have the long-exposure flash synchro option where the flash fires quickly in a longer exposure time (like 1/60 second) which allows the main subject to be lit up and the background to also show in the image.

I could not figure out how to get the long-exposure flash synchro option to work, unfortunately.

 

[Clovishound]

Any exposure longer than 1/200 sec will sync with your D3300. The 685 will do High Speed Sync, if you put it in that mode. The down side is that you lose flash power in HSS. I don't know if there is a formula for how much you lose, but I have noticed that in manual mode, if I turn on HSS and crank the shutter speed up above 1/200, my images darken, and I have to adjust flash power, aperture, or ISO. I currently have no real need for HSS, so don't use it, mainly due to that power loss.

Here is an example of the effect that BF talked about.

This scene was backlit with reflected light. It was in shade, but light was reflecting off the water that was behind the plant. I wanted to get the shadow of the lizard to show, shining through the leaf. Both were shot with my 685 on, and in manual mode.

Here is the first shot. There is enough ambient backlight to see the shadow, but it's not very noticeable. I had the shutter speed set to 1/180 sec, just below the max normal sync speed. Note, it will sync at 1/200 sec, but not above that without switching to HSS.

After I took the first shot, I lowered my shutter speed to 1/45 sec to increase the amount of ambient light, not only shining through the leaf, but also in the background, although it was still rather dark. Most backgrounds will lighten considerably, depending on how many stops you bring the shutter down to. Keep in mind that if you are shooting handheld, and/or the subject is moving, you may get a ghost image. One from the exposure of the flash, and one of the ambient exposure when the subject or camera moves during the exposure. In the case of longer shutter speeds, like this one, it's a good idea to take multiple shots, and hopefully one of them won't have a ghost image because either the camera or subject happened to be still enough when the picture was taken. I got lucky and happened to nail it on the first longer exposure. It's a good thing, because the lizard moved as soon as I took the shot.